Ukraine is attempting to attack the Kursk nuclear power plant, strengthening the notion that the Kursk offensive is aimed at causing major disruption by capturing or destroying the facility.
The Russian Defense Ministry reported one suicide drone attack on the plant. Russian President Vladimir Putin said, “The enemy is attempting to attack the nuclear power plant, and we have informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and promised to send experts to visit the site and assess the situation.”
IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said he plans to visit the plant during the week of August 26.
Concrete for the first reactor of the Kursk-2 reactor is scheduled to be poured in 2018.
Last year, Ukraine attacked the same facility with a drone. Nuclear Engineering International reported in July 2023 that “Unit 4 of Russia's Kursk Nuclear Power Plant was completely disconnected from the power grid after a Ukrainian kamikaze drone loaded with explosives fell near the plant.”
Parts of one crashed drone from the most recent attack were found approximately 100 meters from the compound. Photos (see below) show it to be a first-person view (FPV) quadcopter drone equipped with what appears to be a RPG-7 warhead or an improvised explosive device similar to it.
The device appears to resemble a TBG-7V warhead, a thermobaric bomb. Below is a photo of the warhead device released on a Russian Telegram channel.
Source: Telegram channel TACC
This photo shows a drone that is battery-powered and has a short flight range of just a few kilometers.
Source: Telegram channel TACC
If the photo is an accurate depiction of what the Russian Defense Ministry and President Putin claim was used in the attack on the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant, there is little reason to believe it would actually cause significant damage, and the drone appears to have been smuggled into the area of the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant and operated there.
However, Kursk Oblast's acting governor, Alexei Smirnov, reported an even larger attack than the Defense Ministry said, saying there were four missile alerts on August 21 and 22.
He said that air defense forces shot down one Ukrainian missile on the evening of August 21, two more during the night, and one drone on August 22. Smirnov did not say what type of missile or drone was used in the attack.
Shortly after the attack on the cooling towers of the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant on August 11, Russia established air defenses around the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant, fearing an attack from Ukraine.
Russia said two drones hit the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant, and the IAEA visited the plant to assess the damage and measure possible radioactive releases.
Smoke rises from a cooling tower at the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant in Russian-controlled part of Ukraine on August 11. Photo provided by the Press Office of the President of Ukraine.
The attack at Kursk appears to have been aimed at a nuclear waste storage area at the facility, but this has not been confirmed, and it is also unclear why Smirnov's account differed so much from official accounts of the attack.
The official statement about one drone suggests that Russia wanted to highlight the attack but not to alarm the region. It is unclear what type of air defense system was installed around the Kursk nuclear plant.
Kursk Nuclear Power Plant is one of the three largest nuclear power plants and the fourth largest electricity producer in Russia. It currently has two operating reactors, two decommissioned older reactors, two reactors under construction that are not scheduled for completion (Kursk 5 and Kursk 6), and two new VVER reactors currently under construction.
VVER is a water-water energy reactor originally designed by Savely Moiseevich Feinberg at the Kurchatov Institute. A newer version of this design is the VVER-TOI, and the first TOI plant is currently under construction in Kursk.
Improved safety standards, improved power output and certified (conditionally) to comply with European utility requirements.
Kursk's plans call for replacing the two operating old reactors with two new ones (construction to begin in 2018), as well as building two more VVER-TOI reactors in the future. In January 2023, a 235-ton steel dome will be installed over the No. 1 reactor and covered with a thick layer of reinforced concrete to form the containment building.
The two operating and two decommissioned reactors are of the same RBMK (graphite-moderated reactor) design as Chernobyl. The facility, 40 km west of Kursk, has been used as a prop for filming stories about Chernobyl.
The Chernobyl nuclear disaster in April 1986 occurred when a failed testing procedure caused the reactor to lose control, resulting in an explosion and a tragic chain of events as efforts were made to control the damaged reactor and stop the disaster from spreading to the other three reactors.
About 5% of the damaged facility's reactor core was released into the atmosphere, spreading radioactivity over much of Europe. Two Chernobyl workers were killed in an explosion that night, and 28 more died of acute radiation syndrome within weeks.
The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation concluded that the nuclear disaster caused approximately 5,000 cases of thyroid cancer and 15 deaths.
Brave helicopter pilots and others who tried to stop the runaway reactor and build a cement cover to prevent further radiation leaks later died of radiation poisoning.
A helicopter flying over Chernobyl. Photo: https://www.ruaviation.com/docs/8/2017/5/10/137/?h
So what would Ukraine gain from attacking the Kursk nuclear power plant? Although many have commented on Ukrainian activities within Russia's Kursk region, strictly speaking the attack has no specific military objective.
The Russian military had only small territorial forces in the region, the Russian command considered the area a third-level priority, and little to no preparations had been made to defend the mostly rural and sparsely populated area. No significant fortifications, command centers, or air defense systems existed when the offensive began on August 6.
There is considerable dispute over NATO's involvement in Operation Kursk. Russia believes that NATO planned the attack on Kursk and secretly trained Ukrainians for the operation.
The operation involves a large amount of Western equipment, including Leopard, Challenger and Abrams tanks, IRIS-T, Crotale-NG and Patriot air defense vehicles, and thousands of drones. Russia similarly believes Ukraine is receiving significant intelligence support from NATO.
However, NATO countries say they were not informed of the operation. Western powers have remained largely silent about the attacks on the Zaporizhia and Kursk nuclear power plants.
According to the best available analysis, the purpose of attacking the two nuclear facilities was to create panic in both Russia and Europe. The idea of embarrassing Russia is well known and has been part of NATO's scenario for Ukraine.
After all, Ukraine knows it cannot defeat the larger and better equipped Russian military, so destabilizing Moscow is a way around a war that will end badly for Kiev sooner or later.
The recent attempt to send a swarm of drones over Moscow is part of such a plan. It is highly questionable whether it would have been possible to destabilize Russia, but when rolling the dice, you can always count on a seven.
A second, related explanation is to ask NATO to come to Ukraine's aid: a nuclear disaster could force Europe to press for military intervention in Ukraine and help convince the United States to commit elite airborne forces to the war.
The idea of US and other NATO forces going to war in Ukraine would spread the war across Europe and beyond, which would likely exploit the US and NATO concentration in Europe to produce other outcomes, such as an Iranian attack on Israel or a Chinese attack on Taiwan.
The question that arises is whether NATO's intervention in Kursk had the backing of higher ups, or was in fact the colonel's solution to a growing realization that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his government would soon be defeated on the battlefield.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is suffering losses on the battlefield. Image: X Screenshot
NATO military operators have been in the war for years and have suffered their own losses on the battlefield after Russia targeted a headquarters in Ukraine known to be home to a large number of NATO officers.
There have been no public attempts to determine who was involved in Operation Kursk or who was behind the attacks on nuclear power plants in Ukraine and Russia.
Such provocations will have serious consequences, but what those will be remains to be seen.
Moscow's soon-to-be ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, told reporters on August 22 (as reported by the Russian government-affiliated news outlet Russia Today) that “President Putin has decided how to respond to Kiev's aggression in Russia's Kursk region, and those responsible will definitely be punished.”
Meanwhile, the threat of drones and missiles aimed at nuclear facilities raises fears of a Chernobyl-like disaster, or even worse.
Stephen Brien is a senior correspondent for Asia Times and previously served as staff director for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Subcommittee on the Near East and as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy.
This article originally appeared on his Weapons and Strategy Substack and is republished with permission.
